Fahima back to jail

According to Ha'aretz:

Supreme Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein ruled Sunday afternoon that pro-Palestinian activist Tali Fahima will remain in custody until the end of legal procedings against her.

In other words she'll go to jail until she's put in jail.

Annointing the occupation

Here's an interesting article on the elections in Iraq. It's by Salim Lone, who worked for the UN in Iraq before his boss was killed there in a bombing. The whole article's worth a read but try this if you;re in a hurry:

The millions of Iraqis, as well as the UN electoral team and the Iraqi election commission staff, who did participate in the process despite the grave risk, deserve our respect. But it was a risk taken in vain. The election was illegitimate, and cannot resolve the rampant insecurity resulting from the occupation. The only way to stop the destruction of Iraq is to end the occupation and enfranchise the Sunnis, who are leading the resistance because they see the US as systematically excluding them from the role they deserve to play in Iraq.

Lenni Brenner on Zionism and the holocaust

Goodness me, learning all the time. According to this article by Lenni Brenner, Sharon came from a Jabotinsky loving family, joined Labour then Likud, and now he's with (though not in) Labour again. I always thought he had a Labour background and joined (indeed founded) Likud thereby showing that left and right zionists are both as bad as each other. It now turns out, they're twice as bad as each other.

Anyway the article details Lenni Brenner's response to an article by Moshe Arens, in the New York Sun, seeking to rehabilitate the Zionist revisionists of holocaust Europe. The article by Arens is in the link above.

Moshe Arens' 4/18 "Warsaw Ghetto - The Debt of Truth" condemns the refusal of the Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa, the Socialist-Zionist, Stalinist and Bundist underground, to unite with Betar's Zydowski Zwiazek Wojskowi in their final battle. "ZOB considered Betar to be a semi-fascist movement."

He blames this on "fratricidal animosity ... between the Socialist Zionist parties and the Revisionist Zionist Party, headed by Zeev Jabotinsky." But all ideologies, Jewish or gentile, saw classic Revisionism as fascist.

Jabotinsky loved pre-Mussolini Italy and condemned him as a "head buffalo." However, he grasped that Britain wasn't going to set up a Zionist state, and wished for Rome as a substitute Mandatory. In New York's 4/11/35 Jewish Daily Bulletin, he implored readers to stop using "'Fascism' as a cuss word." It was

"the official doctrine of ... one of those countries where Jews enjoy full equality.... It is very unwise to insist on antagonizing one of them by turning to abuse a term and an idea which is so highly cherished." Indeed, "the Permanent Mandates Commission which supervises Palestinian affairs has an Italian chairman .... Responsible leaders ought to take care."

The 3/36 issue of Revisionism's L'Idea Sionistica reported the establishment of a Betar squadron at Mussolini's naval academy:

A triple chant ordered by the squad's commanding officer -- 'Viva L'Italia!, Viva IL Re!, Viva IL Duce!' resounded .... This year there are 49 cadets .... The majority are university students and 30 of them belong to the GUF. (Gioventù Universitaria Fascista - University Fascist Youth- LB)

London's 6/12/36 World Jewry reported an interview with Wolfgang von Weisl, Revisionism's financial director: "He, personally, was a supporter of Fascism, and he rejoiced at the victory of Fascist Italy in Abyssinia as a triumph of the White races against the Black."

Mussolini became Hitler's ally against the left in Spain and expelled his Betar fans. But as late as 1/40, Ha Dagel, their Harbin magazine, had photos of them on stage with Japanese, puppet Manchukuo and Zionist flags:

"The Third Congress of the Jewish Communities of the Far East welcomes the Great Empire of the Rising Sun's aspiration for the establishment of peace and a new order in East Asia .... The Third Congress ... calls on the Jewry of the Far East to actively participate in establishing the new order and in building East Asia, guided by the principle of struggle against the Comintern, in close collaboration with all nations."

Each ZOB constituent must be held accountable for its role in the 1930s and holocaust. But in 1943 they faced military defeat, with or without the ZZW, at the hands of Hitler, self-proclaimed disciple of Mussolini and Fascism. Historians will forgive them for refusing to sully their defense of Jewish honor, by accepting as comrades, adherents of their murderers' ideology.

Lenni Brenneris the author of Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, and the editor of
51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis . He has also just edited
Jefferson & Madison On Separation of Church and State: Writings on Religion and
Secularism (Barricade Books). He can be reached at BrennerL21@aol.com.

Israel steals land

I know this is like a "Pope is Catholic" story but it's the strange means that Israel uses to steal the land that make it newsworthy now. This latest land grab in and around East Jerusalem shows all that's wrong with Zionism in the modern world: the ethnic cleansing, the colonial settlement, the apartheid laws and the ridiculous pretence that Israel is a society ruled by law. This of course invokes the law relating to the bizarre notion of "present absentees". And it is an update on a decision taken secretly by the Israeli cabinet back in the summer.

Update: see this Comment from someone called Eurosabra.

This measure has been reversed, 1/31, by order of the Attorney General's office. Are you going to carry THAT as an item as well, or are you just going to let the world--or at least your readers--continue to think that the Absentee Property Law has been extended to East Jerusalem as well?
See headheeb.blogmosis.com for reports on the intra-Israeli bureaucratic jockeying on this as well.

Personally I'm not sure if Israel is so obedient to its own laws that confiscations won't happen but we shall see.

The trouble with anti-semitism

There is a report in The Observer. online today that says that "anti-Jewish attacks [in the UK are] at a record level". The report draws on statistics gathered by the Community Security Trust (CST), a subsidiary of the so-called Board of Deputies of British Jews. On the basis of the same statistics the Jewish Chronicle. headed its article simply "UK anti-Semitic incidents rise". Nothing about records being broken or anything like that. Also, the JC, unlike The Observer, draws attention to a report published in Israel which reports more assaults on Jews in the UK but less incidents overall. The CST has refused to confirm any figures for 2004 as, "before releasing the figures for any year, the CST has to carry out rigorous checks on the data".

I have yet to see any detailed breakdown of the Israeli figures or for any CST figures for 2004. The CST uses nine categories of incident:

1.Extreme violence
2.Assault
3.Damage and Desecration
4.Threats
5.Abusive behaviour
6.Literature
7.Info Collection
8.Criminal
9.Suspicious behaviour


Unfortunately the CST doesn't offer any definition of its categories. For example, surely there must be scope for double counting when the first five categories are all criminal of themselves and yet there is a separate category called "Criminal". And what is "Info Collection"? And as for "Suspicious behaviour", how does someone behave suspiciously anti-semitically without behaving actually anti-semitically?

The problem here is that the CST is part of the Zionist movement and, therefore, we have to view everything they say with, at best, scepticism. The fact that they are being so coy with the 2004 figures merely compounds the suspicion that they are not being cautious with their data, but cautious with their spin. They want to stop criticism of Israel, but if they link reports on Israel to an increase in anti-semitism they undermine Zionism's first justification: that it is a bulwark against anti-semitism. If they say that it has nothing to do with Israel then people will happily continue to berate the last of the colonial settler states. So let's just see what they come up with.

US hypocrisy

Here's a good letter in today's Observer.

President Bush's 'freedom and democracy' rhetoric appears to have found a gullible listener in David Aaronovitch (Comment, last week). American governments of both parties have routinely supported convenient tyrants, using such rhetoric. They have not hesitated to overthrow democratic regimes (generally described as dangerously leftist) and install reactionary dictators (generally described as 'preparing for free elections').

Genuinely free elections have often been seen as too dangerous, as when President Eisenhower in an unguarded moment said flatly that Vietnamese elections promised at Geneva had not been held as everyone knew that Ho Chi Minh would score a landslide.

Archbishop Romero pleaded with President Carter to stop supplying weapons to the Salvadoran death squads; days later he was shot down at the altar.

The US embassy in Honduras was headquarters for the war which President Reagan pursued against the elected Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Ambassador/Proconsul John Negroponte will now fly the flag of 'freedom' over the largest embassy in the world, in Baghdad.
Jeremy Scanlon
Lapworth Warwickshire

There's also an article on the ISM's Tom Hurndall here.

Sharon has a dream

Jazzman accuses Sharon of fraud as he (Sharon that is) called up (or threw up) that infamous lie that Martin Luther King had denounced anti-zionists as anti-semites. He might just as well have accused me of fraud. I claim to be an "anti-zionist...browsing the media" and, with all the media coverage of Zionists exploiting the holocaust, I didn't notice it.

Pecking order pursued beyond the mass graves

The Jewish Chronicle, this week, has a lot on the holocaust as one might expect. Apparently there was a row between "Cardiff Jews" and the Cardiff United Nations Association. The UNA was going to hold an event titled "Commemoration of Armenian Holocaust (90th anniversary) and the Jewish Holocaust (60th anniversary of the Auschwitz liberation)". Well that was too much for Rabbi Mordechai Wollenberg of the Cardiff United Synagogue who got them to reverse the title "placing the Shoah first". Now I object to the use of the word "holocaust" to describe other genocidal campaigns and I've said why that is in previous posts. I also object to the expression "Jewish holocaust" since it was not only Jews who perished in, what, I agree, should be called theholocaust.

General Assembly hears Israeli anthem for the first time

Much is made of Hatikvah being sung at the UN General Assembly in honour of the victims of the holocaust. Very strange considering that most holocaust victims would never have heard that song, nor understood its words if they did.

Wistrich off balance

Another article has Robert Wistrich complaining that "it is becoming increasingly difficult to even discuss the Shoah without balancing it by appropriate references to Palestine".

Lord Steel angers Liverpool Zionists

Lord Steel invoked the holocaust to call for sanctions against Israel because the Palestinians "find themselves hemmed in by barbed wire and their very existence threatened".

Sharansky likens Palestinian society to Nazi Germany

Sharansky has said that "the PA should pursue a policy of zero-tolerance of any and all displays of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in Palestinian media". Now if there is anti-semitism in the Palestinian media then this is to be deplored, but if Sharansky can't tell the difference between anti-semitism and anti-zionism how can he expect better from people his government clearly believes are a lower form of life?

If MEMRI serves, or if it serves MEMRI

I was just surfing the internet when I stumbled on this absurd article from the Tehran Times, gleefully reproduced in maybe 8 Zionist sites including, of course, MEMRI.

The article, headed "Lies of the Holocaust Industry", is so mealy mouthed it's hard to draw specific claims from it that are not undermined within the article itself. For example the writer, Hossein Amiri, says:

No one is trying to ignore the suffering of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis, but the suffering of a religious/ethnic group should not cause the world to forget the suffering of another nation or allow those who suffered persecution to do the same injustice to another nation.

Now as a soundbite to reject the notion of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine being in any way, a just recompense on account of six million Jews being murdered by the Nazis, that may have been fair enough. But Amiri is. trying to ignore "the suffering of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis", thus:

After the end of the war in 1945, the Allies along with Zionist leaders began formulating strange conceptions about the killing of Jews at Nazi camps which a modern man can hardly accept. By conjuring up images of gas chambers, they are attempting to convey the idea that the Jews have undergone indescribable torture and that the world’s conscience should be awakened to this issue so that the Jews are not subjected to injustice again.

And this:

The revisionist historians have proven in two decades of study that if Hitler had carried out a systematic program to eradicate the Jews, it would have taken more time than the six years that the war lasted. They have also proven that such an act of ethnic cleansing through the use of the poison gas Zyklon-B, as the Zionists claim, was not possible at the time.

"Revionist historians" is an expression that puts a respectable veneer on that ragbag of wacky flat-earth society eccentrics and neo-Nazis we call holocaust deniers. There are too many of these around it's true but it's mostly the Zionists who give them the publicity they definitely don't deserve. But then Amiri drifts into full-blown libel territory when he lumps Norman Finkestein in with the deniers, so:

Norman J. Finkelstein, a Jewish professor at New York University critical of Zionist policies, has called the claim [that six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis] the "Holocaust Industry", which is only meant to boost support for the government of Israel.

This is far worse than oversimplification. It's a lie. No, it's worse than a lie. Finkestein's only assertion about claims made by the "holocaust industry" about the holocaust itself, is not that the numbers killed have been exaggerated, but that the number, reproductive capacity and longevity of the survivors, has been exaggerated. Professor Finkelstein argues that this exaggeration of the number of survivors comes close to holocaust denial as the more survivors there were, the lower the number killed. And this exaggeration is used to extort money from European states and companies. He does say that the holocaust is used to deflect criticism from Israel and he argues against holocaust uniqueness claims, but nowhere does he suggest that the holocaust involved any less killing of Jews than other reputable historians do, nor does he question the methods used.

What I find so bewildering about the mentality underlying this article is that it is so politically, and indeed logically, infantile. The writer correctly states that the holocaust does not justify the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, he then goes on to minimise the holocaust thereby giving ammunition to the Zionist movement. In other words, he serves MEMRI.

Selective amnesia

Remember this.

Disengagement causes disaster says Rabbi

(With thanks to Roland)
The former Chief Rabbi of Israel has said that the tsunami disaster was god's punishment for the "disengagement plan".

The [Babylonian] Talmud [the tractate of Berachot]says that when God is angry at the nations of the world for not aiding Israel - they want to evacuate, to disengage, to interfere in our affairs, He claps his hands, causing an earthquake.

Boos against Melanie Phillips

Well the debate has now taken place on the proposition "Zionism today is the real enemy of the Jews" and the motion was carried by 355 to 320. I thought that this didn't tell us much about the debate as the anti-Zionists may have been more motivated to attend. But Intelligence Squared, very helpfully, took audience polls before and after the debate. Before the debate, for and against were very evenly matched at 30.6% and 30.4% respectively and the don't knows stood at 39%. After the debate the don't knows were reduced to 5.5%,for stood at 49.7% and against at 44.8% So the Zionists and the anti-Zionists were both quite persuasive on the night. But the antis clinched it. The online vote was a tad different with the Zionists getting 97.2% and the antis getting 2.5%. The curious feature of the online poll, to my mind anyway, is that the don't knows got 0.3%. Why would someone bother to vote "don't know" in an online poll?

Anyway, according to the Jewish Chronicle. Melanie Phillips, speaking against the motion, indeed saying that "this is a profoundly anti-Jewish motion, a prejudice based on a set of calumnies". She was booed. Tellingly, another opponent of the motion, Professor Shlomo Ben Ari, in contrast to Phillips, "was given a respectful hearing".

Holocaust legacy

Obviously all the papers are covering Holocaust Memorial Day today, The Independent. apparently more so than others. They have block quotes from 17 people. I don't know how they chose them and I certainly don't know why they chose Ariel Sharon. For all we hear of Holocaust uniqueness, it's remarkable that everyone they speak to uses the holocaust as a link to current issues.

Top of the list is the discredited Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, who speaks of the mutation of anti-semitism into "something else". Amos Oz's contribution is enigmatic:

There is a rise of fanaticism: Islamic, Jewish, European. It's American fundamentalism.

Maybe there's a typo in there.

For Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty, the legacy of the holocaust is "the human rights framework enshrined in the UN Universal Declaration."

For Ariel Sharon, the legacy of the holocaust is to justify every Israeli atrocity.

The Allies knew of the annihilation of the Jews and did nothing. Israel learnt that we can trust no one but ourselves. This phenomenon - of Jews defending themselves and fighting back - is an anathema [to] the new anti-Semites. Legitimate steps of self-defence which Israel takes in its war against Palestinian terror - actions which any sovereign state is obligated to undertake - are presented by those who hate Israel as aggressive, Nazi-like steps.

Irene Kahn, Secretary general of Amnesty International, suggests that the war on terror and the scepticism about American motives have made humanity vulnerable:

There are countless failures to learn from Auschwitz evident in the modern world. We have failed to build a community of shared security and vulnerability. America's war on terror has polarised groups across the Arab world. The atrocities in Sudan show that, in the face of mass crimes against humanity, the international community is unable to find a mechanism to protect people.

Something I feel is missing from all the comment is whether the holocaust could have happened without the war. I'm not saying that it couldn't but it is an argument I've heard before and I really don't know. All I'm saying is that I'm surprised it hasn't been said with all the coverage there's been.

Genocide memorial day?

Here are extracts from a letter by the Muslim Council of Britain responding to quite a disingenuous attack on it by the Guardian. yesterday.

The view held by the MCB since the inception of Holocaust Memorial Day in 2001 is that the subtext of the memorial day - 'Never Again' - is diluted by the exclusive nature of the event....

.....Not to acknowledge current and recent genocides would be to undermine the benefits of remembrance, deprecate lessons learnt from the Nazi Holocaust and call into question our commitment to prevent current and future inhumanity. The Nazi Holocaust began with a hatred of an entire people because of their religion and ethnic identity. To reflect a more tolerant and inclusive Britain, we believe that Holocaust Memorial Day ought to be renamed "Genocide Memorial Day" to make no distinction between genocides undertaken against people of other religions and ethnicity.

The memorial day would in our opinion be better served by covering the ongoing mass killings and human rights abuses in our world, and thus make the cry 'Never Again' real for all people who suffer, even now. We must do more than just reflect on the past. We must be able to recognise when similar abuses occur in our own time.

Guantanamo four released without charge

But don't worry, Charles Clarke is thinking out loud of ways to round them up, tag them, keep them under house arrest, etc, etc. Charles Clarke has even told us that they are dangerous.

Jewish paranoia?

How I hate that expression. I remember people saying it over perfectly legitimate grievances about anti-semitism. But now look. I stumbled on this webring. I think it's a webring. It's dedicated to "truth in the Middle East" and it contains the kind of right-wing racist extremism that gives the internet a bad name. See this:

Israel, Taiwan and the Thirteen Colonies

It doesn't matter who is president, the U.S.will always take the other side against Israel because that's where their interest lies; and other essays

This webring contains many many similar sites. Not for the squeamish.

"Released" from Guantanamo

The Guardian has a Q & A session on the Guantanamo Four. They were released from Guantanamo yesterday only to be arrested on the way home to the UK. Apparently there are five more UK resident detainees at Guantanamo, who the UK government refuses to represent, as if their handling of previous cases constitutes representation.

Will British residents still held in Guantánamo receive help from our government?

There are at least five other long-term residents who do not have UK passports being held at Guantánamo Bay. At least two have British wives and children. The UK government says the men's countries of birth must help them.

Zionism - Past, Present & Future

Event Description:
Organised by Arab Media Watch, the Council for Arab-British Understanding, Pluto Books and the LSE Palestine Society.

Date: 01/02/2005

Start Time: 7:00 PM
Ending Time: 8:30 PM


Venue: Room D602, St Clement's Building, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE.

Free entry, all welcome.

Events over the last few years have re-focused attention on the nature of Zionism. Demographic trends and Israeli practices, most notably settlement expansion and barrier construction, have called into question the viability of the two-state solution and, thus, Zionism itself. Furthermore, the refusenik movement against Israeli involvement in the occupied territories, while welcome, has brought about the myth that Zionism was a benevolent movement until Israel's expansion in 1967.

To discuss Zionism's past, present and future, we are proud to feature two prominent authors of recent books on the subject, published by Pluto Books, which will be sold at a 20% discount at the event:

John Rose is author of "The Myths of Zionism", and teaches Sociology at Southwark College and London Metropolitan University. Rose was a student at the London School of Economics during the great radical upheaval of the late 1960s. He arrived as a Zionist in 1966 and left in 1969 as a committed pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist. Why? "Simple," he says, "I heard the Arab case for the first time and it was, and remains, unanswerable."

Norton Mezvinsky is co-author, with the late Israel Shahak, of "Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel", and is a Professor of History at Central Connecticut State University. He has been appointed a University Professor by the Connecticut State University Board of Trustees (in the more than 150-year history of this university, only six University Professors have been appointed). He has published extensively and lectured in many parts of the world on various aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Zionism, US policy in the Middle East and religious fundamentalisms. He is currently writing a book on Christian Zionism.

Chair: Sharif Hikmat Nashashibi, Arab Media Watch chairman

For further information, please contact:

AMW: info@arabmediawatch.com, 07956 455 528

Muslims. muesli and media

There has been a worrying increase in anti-Jewish physical attacks in the UK from 2003 into 2004. Also there has been a spate of such attacks on frummers. in London's Stamford Hill area just recently. These latter, we are told, have been carried out by black and Asian youths giving Nazi salutes and chanting things like Zeig Heil. These are, of course, cause for concern and an explanation needs to be found, the attacks have to be stopped and the attackers need to be pursued. So into the fray steps the Israeli government.

According to David Weinberg, at Natan Sharansky's office, "most acts of anti-semitism in Britain were carried out by Arabs or Muslims" and it's The Guardian,The Independent. and the BBC who have "created a climate that encouraged such attacks". In the case of the BBC:

He singled out the coverage of the Israeli army assault on Jenin refugee camp in 2002, in which 58 Palestinians were killed, mostly armed men.

Now what are the thought processes behind a Guardian. -reader attack on a Jewish target? Do they read the Guardian, put down their muesli, swap their sandals for a pair of boots and then go and attack a Jewish target? Or are Guardian. and Independent. readers more thoughtful than that? Do they watch BBC reports on Jenin, where the Israeli Chief of Staff casually announced that his troops had killed over two hundred Palestinians, then wait until over two years have elapsed and then go out and attack some Jewish targets?

As I have already said, these attacks are cause for concern and action but would it help to silence those precious few reports that actually shine a light on Israel rather than the usual siding with Israel or muddying the waters. I think it would probably hurt more than help.

Present absentees and absent absentees

Azmi Bishara spoke about this issue on Sunday at SOAS. I didn't realise that it was current news. Of course I accept that it's a current issue. It appears that we are into another round of Israeli land theft, not this time on account of the barrier, but on account of Israel designating Jerusalem its legitimate (ie to Israel, undisputed) territory. I'll return to this issue shortly.